I'm interested that those who are charging seem to have opted for putting the charge on each reservation rather than an annual fee to the group. How does this work in practice? Does one member of the group pick up the whole set of books each month and pay the charge? Some of our groups pick up their books in a set, in this way, but others prefer to pick up their copies individually - presumably in this case someone would be nominated to pay the charge, and the group would work out between themselves how they contributed?
Brenda
Brenda Mead
Reading Groups Librarian (ASAP Team)
Cambridgeshire County Council Libraries
Roger Ascham Library Site
Ascham Road, Cambridge, CB4 2BD
Tel: 01223 718367 / 07766 510217
Fax: 01223 712011
email: [log in to unmask]
I'm currently reading 'The Canon' by Natalie Angier - what are you reading?
-----Original Message-----
From: lis-pub-libs: UK Public Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Frances Hendrix
Sent: 16 August 2010 15:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Reading Groups and charges
Thank you for that explanation Craig.
It seems you have considered all aspects.
My concern now is it is always much more difficult to put prices up than
down. But I hope with the change you are also doing some marketing on the
excellent service you provide etc, and hopefully recruit more groups
many thanks
f
Frances Hendrix
Martin House Farm, Hilltop Lane, Whittle le Woods, Chorley, Lancs PR6 7QR,
UK
tel: 01257 274 833. fax: 01257 266 488
email: [log in to unmask]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Craig Jones" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>; "Frances Hendrix"
<[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 3:29 PM
Subject: Re: Reading Groups and charges
Hi Frances
We did consider seriously how much we should charge for the reading groups
reservations. The reason we went with £2 in the end was as follows:
Our reading groups survey indicated to us the number of members of the
groups. 7% had fewer than 5 members, and 59% had between 6 and 10. As our
online reservation fees are only 50p per item we felt that if we priced the
group fee too high at this stage people would see no reason for their group
to be linked with the library and would just request books as individuals.
Thus our contact with them would be lost and we would not get any of the
benefits of that community contact with them.
Also, we were reducing the loan period from 13 weeks to 6, which we felt was
going to be a blow for a lot of groups, so we wanted to minimise the impact
of introducing the new charge at the same time.
This new charge will now become part of our standard charges and will be
reviewed accordingly. We are to some extent testing the water and will
monitor if the charge has cost us reading group borrowers. However, after
building up the contact with these groups we wanted to tread carefully.
We have also made savings in our whole process of reading group loans as we
are no longer having to maintain a separate collection of stock, which was
costly, with a member of staff whose role it was to look after it. The whole
process has been brought into the day to day activities of all libraries and
all library stock is now available to everyone.
Craig
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